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Cheap Cast-Iron "Normacast" Electrodes Put To The Test (Video)

As y"all know, I"ve been experimenting with welding cast iron lately... I recently used Ni-99 Nickel electrodes which worked great, but dang, were those things expensive...

I started looking for cheaper alternatives to nickel electrodes, and I found a product from Hobart called "Normacast" which is considerably less expensive... They cost around half as much and are easy to find as well, I bought the electrodes I used in this video at the local Tractor Supply, where I got 14 of them for around $15...

But the real question is, how well do they work?

I set out to find out... I dug through a scrap pickup I have, and pulled out a random cast iron exhaust manifold to work with, and set about my repair...

Manifolds are always fun to weld... They"re generally made from "lower" grades of cast iron, they suffer rapid and frequent heating and cooling cycles, and they"re "dirty" from thousands of miles of engine exhaust running through them...

Anyway, the particular manifold I found was white or grey cast iron... I "veee-d" out the imaginary crack, and drilled holes in the ends of the "crack" as well, to keep it from spreading, and set about welding it:

I followed standard Cast Iron welding procedure, and gave the manifold a nice preheat... Then welded, peened, welded some more, buried it in sand and let it cool...

And how"d it turn out? Quite well I"d say... There were no signs of cracks or other defects, but the video shows the finished repair a lot better than I can describe it

I was really happy with how it turned out, and I was also pleasantly surprised with how well the normacast electrodes ran...

Anyway, here's the video, I thought it was really fun to make, and I hope you guys enjoy it... As always, have a nice week, everyone